Obituary of Roger Kelly

Roger was born in 1933 - at the lowest point of the “Great Depression” in Saskatchewan, the hardest-hit province in Canada when there was no rain to speak of, nor were there jobs. His father was a young teacher struggling to survive when teachers were a “dime a dozen” and schools were usually “one-room”! Roger showed his experimental leaning early by climbing to the top of the schoolhouse at 2 1/2 years and then needing a rescue!

With regard to school, he seems to have been a gifted student from the beginning and eventually his parents were able to have him go to High School in the city of Saskatoon where he excelled in academic and extracurricular activities - everything but “physical education” where he objected to the philosophy of the teacher who declared that if a male didn’t “stink” he wasn’t a good phys-ed student! Roger preferred his Latin and also studied Greek and German on his own. During those High School years, he created and enjoyed working in his own attic laboratory (often with a friend), getting chemicals and encouragement from his father (who by this time was teaching chemistry in a high school). His first research papers, (for his Master’s Degree at the University of Saskatchewan), were for studies of cement, his first “material”!

All during his youth (and for his entire life), Roger had a passion for music, taking piano lessons and playing saxophone, at first with the Navy Cadet Band, and then in the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, which bought an oboe for him and paid for him to go to Winnipeg (Manitoba) for special lessons. (Later, while at McGill University, a well-known orchestra conductor asked why he wasn’t playing the oboe professionally, to which Roger replied that while he loved music, he expected to earn more money with science!)

After earning his Master’s degree and getting married, he and Shirley (a teacher and pianist with whom he played almost daily piano and oboe duets for most of his life) moved from Saskatoon to Montreal and McGill University for him to work on his Ph.D. under Prof. Carl Winkler. After two years, he received his Ph.D. and moved on to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) at Chalk River where his two sons, Steven and Bruce, were born. Four years later, Roger accepted the invitation in 1962 from Euratom to work at its atomic energy laboratory near Lago Maggiore in northern Italy. The work was satisfying and the opportunity to be immersed in the European environment was an education much appreciated by both Roger and his wife.

The next move was five years later — back to Canada in 1967 to accept a position with the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) where he immensely enjoyed teaching classes and working with his research students from various parts of the world, as well as enjoying the social life at the university. He spent his sabbatical year (1974-75) in Amsterdam at the FOM Institute working with J. Kistemaker and Frans W. Saris - another great year for the entire family, which especially enjoyed their explorations of Dutch towns and countryside by bicycle. (No car that year!)

Later, back at McMaster, Roger was pleased to be invited by Jim Ziegler to move to the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, NY, where he went in 1980, staying for almost thirteen years, whereupon he accepted an invitation to work with Antonio Miotello at the University of Trento in northern Italy, starting in 1992. There he was also honored by an invitation to join the Scientific Committee of IRST (Isituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica) made up of high-ranking scientists from other parts of Italy. He and Shirley especially appreciated this last chance to renew their love of Italy and its people - first established in 1962 and maintained with short trips since.

Eventually, his working life drew to a satisfying close when, at the age of 66, he retired from the University of Trento and went back to Canada (December 1999), this time to Vancouver, BC, where Shirley had relatives. Unfortunately, an accident occurred a few years later and after a lengthy hospital stay, he was transferred to a “Care” facility where he died at the age of 76 on April 2, 2009, very content with both his personal life and his scientific life. He had published 250 scientific papers and now has been honored by a flow of affectionate and comforting letters to Shirley from former students! He was also remembered and honored by a tribute given by a gathering of former colleagues and friends at the 19th International Conference on Ion Beam Analysis, 7-11 September 2009, in Cambridge, England. He touched many people over the years with his contrasting personal characteristics, for example, both his breezy sense of humor and his serious (even stubborn) dedication to careful scientific research and to the friends he made along the way!